Contented-Campers.com

It has been a quiet week as we travel around Oslo – We are flying out for 10 days on Saturday, so a down time for the blog.

A couple of firsts, though, in Norway: 1) We hit 100km/h for the first time in 2 months as we travelled towards Oslo. Bear in mind that on the routes up north we’ve averaged around 42km/h, while on the scenic routes we’ve been down to around 34km/h. Couldn’t believe how quickly we made progress. 2) Got a haircut. On the upside, happy to have hair, but having prices of NOK550 – NOK650 quoted (that’s €65 or Rand 1140, or NZD 117), I’m just not that precious. Anyway, stopped in Gjøvik on our way around an enormous fjord/lake and dived in to a Kurdish barber who cut for NOK180. I think he did a good job, and there’s only 2 weeks difference between a good cut and bad cut in any case 3) went shopping for groceries. Ouch. So glad we stocked to the brim before arriving here. There’s not many places that make you look back fondly on Swiss grocery prices. But there’s only 1 piece of salmon in the deep freeze (for a tom yum soup) and some cheese left for the week. I may make full use of the full British fried breakfast obsession next week!! 49 New found respect for positive assumptions. Everywhere we’ve been in Norway the assumption seems to be: Welcome, look after the place as if it were yours, and yes, we trust you. Look at this stuff next to the road. Great BBQ, fire starters, wood and charcoal provided, huge BBQ toolset … Wow. How many places do you know where this stuff would not be gone in the time you flipped your burger?

And the van – well, we went to our designated Fiat dealer to have the front bumper repaired – but they don’t do that. Sent off to a fairly nearby panel beater, yes, they do that sort of thing, but no bumpers in stock and these need to be ordered and painted. To end – we’ll have the bumper done on our return to Oslo week after next. As far as our very faulty Navi is concerned (different error messages weekly) a lot of muttering, head-shaking, and no, we can’t help. Will see what we can do in Germany.

So, plans for the next couple of days. Currently overnighting in a busy carpark next to a drained artificial lake in the middle of Gjøvik (hmm, I hope Norwegians rise later than the Swiss), dinner tomorrow at friends whom we’ve not seen for 12 years, then off towards Oslo with an overnight close to the airport so we can dump water etc etc – would hate to return to a week’s worth of fermentation.

That’s it for a while – I’ll get back to the blog on 3 October.